Month: June 2017

Here’s what happens in a Santa Monica garden in the springtime:

My first experience with oysters was as a student in Paris in the 1980s. Oysters there are always served with ceremony: nestled in ice on a stand, a small bowl of shallot-vinegar sauce on the side, and brown bread and butter to eat along side them. I developed a taste for eating them with Champagne, but a nice Sancerre works well, as do lots of other white wines. Beer isn’t a common choice, but an eye wasn’t batted when a friend ordered one recently on New Year’s Eve 2016 at Le Dome where my husband and I celebrated with good friends. (See below.)

Oysters are almost always part of a plateau de fruits de mer, which can also include things like little sea snails called bigorneaux (see above) and their bigger cousins called bulots, clams, scallops and crustaceans like shrimp, crab, and, if you’re feeling royale, lobster.

In France, back in the ’80s, I learned to only eat oysters in months that ended in “r” or “bre,” so septembre, octobre, novembre, décembre, janvier, and février. That little rule, though, dates back to days before refrigeration. One too many wealthy gourmand died from indulging out of season, eliciting a royal edict, declared in 1759, that prohibited gathering oysters in France from April through October. Spring and summer was also when oysters reproduced, so it was best, anyway, to leave them alone so there’d be plenty for the colder months. Now, of course, we have refrigeration and we can raise oysters year-round. Which brings me to May of this year.

On a visit to Port St. Joe, Florida, I learned there’s another, equally fabulous way to eat oysters. Indian Pass Raw Bar, an institution in the region, serves enormous local oysters on plastic trays, accompanied by lemon wedges and Saltine crackers. And unless you want to drink a soda with them, you choose frosty, cold beer. Perfection! When you go (and you should! If not for the oysters, then for the empty, white sand beaches), make sure to get crab and corn, too!

Very different oyster experiences, both are wonderful!

We have chickens in the garden who give us the best eggs. We fry and soft-boil them. We use them for cookies and cakes. We make a lot of omelettes. But I’d always been too terrified to try poaching them.

I knew, from overcooked versions I endured at way too many brunches (particularly on Columbus Avenue, NYC), that they were tricky. Some recipes suggested adding vinegar to the poaching water, but I’d tasted too many vinegary poached eggs to want to do that. I read about whipping up whirlpools in simmering water to help the eggs keep their shapes, which sounded complicated and I never believed it would work. Instead of trying any of this, we bought silicone “egg poachers” and used them for years. The results were okay, if a little rubbery around the edges.

I decided to take on the challenge after reading a few pages of the EGG chapter in The Food Lab, the fabulous cookbook by J. Kenji López-Alt, the thoroughly engaging chef/editor of Serious Eats.

Before buying the book, I’d been a fan of López-Alt’s work on the website. His writing is charming and generous and smart. His book is more of the same. His chapter on eggs is clear and comprehensive and gave me the courage to try poaching eggs for the first time in my life. He points out that one of the most important criteria for successful poaching is starting with a fresh egg. Check! I was off to a good start. He eschews the whirlpool idea and finds no need for vinegar, but does recommend keeping them moving once they’re in the barely simmering water. Here’s his recipe on the website. I’ve been using it ever since.

The other night, I steamed some fat, spring asparagus, draped some thinly sliced prosciutto over them, then topped them with an egg! A sprinkling of toasted breadcrumbs finished it off. Perfection!